Stiff fines for low quality drug exporters

by Carol Aloysius

Any manufacturing company that sends low quality drugs to Sri Lanka will have to pay the full cost of the drugs and an additional 25 percent as administrative costs, Health Ministry sources said.

"We have done this regulary whenever drugs were of poor quality.

However, we are now more vigilant and will impose fines and penalise offenders more stringently, by cancelling all future imports," Director, Medical Supplies, Ministry of Health, Dr. Kamal Jayasinghe told the Sunday Observer.

He said that whenever there was quality failure reported from any hospital, the authorities had been informed that they should send samples immediately for testing to the National Quality Assurance laboratory for confirmation, and suspend the use of the drugs till the tests were completed. "We are happy that people are now more vigilant on low quality drugs, since we ensure that only quality drugs are supplied to the public", he said.

Refuting claims that Promomathaizine hydrochloride injection vials found to contain foreign particles (batch No. RE 3036 and RE 307) were still in circulation in some hospitals, he said that the entire stock had been withdrawn from all hospitals and the exporting company of the 25 ml injection vials Elvita Pharma (Pvt) Ltd, had been told that it should stop sending the drugs to Sri Lanka until further notice.

The Health Ministry is reported to have ordered the hospital authorities to withdraw the phials containing the Cloxacillin vaccine fallowing the detection of a foreign particle in a vaccination phial (batch No. CC 2004) at the Medirigiriya Base hospital last week.